A man from the insurance office said Raymond had been steady. Vera said he had been. Steady was not the same as singular. She did not give the man the correction. Corrections were for the parlor and the kitchen. The office could keep steady. She went home with the guest book and put it in a drawer. The drawer was not a shrine. It was a place paper went. Nadine’s name was not in it. The absence was correct. Vera washed the pearls in a bowl because she did not know what else to do with her hands. The clasp worked. The clasp had always worked. She dried them. She did not put them on. Off was allowed for a night.
Loretta came to Nadine’s with food and did not ask to see the locket. Nadine said she had been told to take it and she had taken it. Loretta said then it is yours to put away. Nadine put it in a box in the closet. The box was not a victory. It was a instruction followed. She had loved him. She had also sat in a wife’s row. Both were going to have to live in the apartment. She slept on the couch. The bed still had his side. His side was a habit. Habits could be moved. She moved to the couch for a week and then changed the sheets and moved back. The move back was not forgiveness of herself. It was a spine. She had a job on Wednesday. She went. Work was a room that did not know Labor Day. She needed a room that did not know.
Raymond had met Nadine at a pharmacy counter when a prescription for his blood pressure was delayed and she was the one who said come back at four. He came back at four. He came back the next week without a prescription. Selected truth: his wife was at church, his daughter was grown, his Sundays were loose. Loose was a lie with a true edge. Vera did go to church. Keisha was grown. The Sundays were not loose. They were hers in the afternoon and his in the lie. Nadine took the edge and built a apartment around it. Toothbrush in year two. Locket in year four. Labor Day because the holiday was a blank on Vera’s calendar, a blank Vera had never agreed to donate. He donated it. Nadine cooked. He said Vera’s name when he left. The name was not a protection. It was a bell. Nadine had heard the bell and stayed. Staying was the part she could not hand back in a parlor.